Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Shame: Corrupt and lethal VA Dept paid out $142 million in bonuses last year

In the final episode of season 5 of Games of Thrones, evil queen Cersei was forced by a religious order to march naked in her capital while a nun chanted "shame" and the city's guttersnipes taunted her.

The VA officials who approved $142 million in bonuses for bureaucrats in its lethal agency deserve that punishment and more, sans the nudity although being barefoot is essential.

The Department of Veterans Affairs doled out more than $142 million in bonuses to executives and employees for performance in 2014 even as scandals over veterans' health care and other issues racked the agency.

Among the recipients were claims processors in a Philadelphia benefits office that investigators dubbed the worst in the country last year. They received $300 to $900 each. Managers in Tomah, Wis., got $1,000 to $4,000, even though they oversaw the over-prescription of opiates to veterans – one of whom died.

The VA also rewarded executives who managed construction of a facility in Denver, a disastrous project years overdue and more than $1 billion over budget. They took home $4,000 to $8,000 each. And in St. Cloud, Minn., where an internal investigation report last year outlined mismanagement that led to mass resignations of health care providers, the chief of staff cited by investigators received a performance bonus of almost $4,000.

As one of his final acts last year before resigning, then-VA secretary Eric Shinseki announced he was suspending bonuses in the wake of revelations that VA employees falsified wait lists to meet wait-time targets — ostensibly as part of efforts to secure the extra pay. But he only curtailed them for a sliver of VA executives -- those in senior levels of the Veterans Health Administration, which oversees health care.

While veterans awaited treatment on secret--and longer--wait lists at VA hospitals, some of them died. Whistleblowers were punished.

So far only eight VA officials have been fired--none of been prosecuted with crimes. In his Veteran's Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery today, President Obama said of the VA tragedy, "I'm not satisfied."

I'm sure his sentiment terrifies the lazy and crooked VA paper pushers. Of course it doesn't.

After the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Dear Leader said he was looking for "whose ass to kick."

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